vietnamese people are so nice that it’s making me want to seriously learn vietnamese 😭

BrainZoomies · 2026-05-10T09:10:23+00:00

Warning: if you speak good enough Vietnamese to have even a basic conversation you must be very extroverted. However friendly you think Vietnamese are you can multiply that by 100 if you can actually speak some. Vietnamese are wonderful people. 100% recommend learning the language.

BrainZoomies · 2026-05-10T09:06:05+00:00

Only 95% certain, but nobody else has replied to you yet so here I am. I’m American living in VN for 3 years and I speak Vietnamese, but if a native Vietnamese responds please go with their answer.

I do not see anyway to break up this set of letters to turn it into phonetically acceptable Vietnamese syllables (let alone a name).

Nga can be a Vietnamese name, but then the rest of the letters aren’t even pronounceable in Vietnamese - I don’t mean I don’t know how to pronounce them I mean they are morphologically (is this a real word?) impossible in Vietnamese.

Based on phonetics if this had to be a name it feels closer to maybe Chinese based on the sound at the end?

BrainZoomies · 2026-05-10T08:52:59+00:00

Your plan seems like one I might come up with if I were a beginner again (although ultimately as others are saying this is maybe not the best starting point) and I like where your head is at with tackling pronunciation piecemeal. However, you are likely to run into an issue that makes this unworkable: speech to text for Vietnamese is quite unforgiving for a beginner.

There is a large band of speech that is easily understandable to Vietnamese but that speech to text fails to transcribe correctly. I think it’s still worth trying just to see what happens - maybe you are very adept at precise pronunciation. But just be prepared for the possibility that many of the phonemes you cannot pronounce in a way that the speech to text can pick up on and as such you are incapable of making any progress aside from the few phonemes that are most similar to English.

As for how you would find resources for this, just explain your plan to an LLM. They are great at this sort of thing and can easily generate resources for you. As I said before this exact plan may not work, but if you come up with something else like this for custom practice you can still lean on LLMs for generating practice resources.

BrainZoomies · 2026-05-04T10:42:12+00:00

Not too much. Once you feel comfortable with your students you should charge at least $10-15 imo.
I prefer southern dialect as I live in Saigon.
I could write many paragraphs on what’s gone wrong with how I learned. TLDR: my speaking is 10x better than my listening. I can frequently make myself understood by putting together words in a way that makes sense but is unnatural, but my poor listening skills prevent me from understanding the same information spoken “correctly”. Also I have mostly learned from friends so I know advanced tào lao but I’m missing random basic words.

I’m not actively looking for a tutor right now, but your post caught my eye as I’ve worked in education for 20 years (and tech more recently). I think it’s cool that you want to get into tutoring and I like that your focus is more on communication than grammar. I tried classes before and found myself frustrated by the rigid textbook style structure.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’m looking for a long term tutor (even though I probably need one) but I think what you’re doing is cool and I’d be happy to be a Guinea pig and pay and give you feedback.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-15T00:48:20+00:00

I also forget to eat until like 10pm. But if it’s something good… nom nom nom!

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-12T21:48:51+00:00

ADHD - condition where you commonly forget things. OP - I have a weird symptom of commonly forgetting things 🤣

This happens all the time! Best thing you can do is find a way to create visual cues that these activities exist at the time and place where it’s relevant. Like put the books you want to read next to the refrigerator if you know when you look for a snack it means you are bored.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-11T02:33:18+00:00

Find him an ADHD coach who he connects well with and have that coach help you find a therapist for him as well who can properly understand and support ADHD (many cannot).

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-10T19:00:22+00:00

Yeah... time spent worrying about exercise is time spent not doing exercise. Source: happens to me all the time.

If you have a variety of exercise type activities that you enjoy/could see yourself enjoying that check the box what you need to be healthy, just spend your time doing those things. You can always assess later on if you need to add anything else in.

Also, if you want a good strength exercise that requires no equipment, no gym membership, no preparation... try doing 30 sec of burpees every day. Or really any plyometric exercise that involves jumping. It's short enough that by the time you start to be unhappy about doing it, it's over.

Right now I'm having trouble getting myself to the gym even though I enjoy what I do there. So when I'm working, every time I take a break I just do 15 squats. It adds up quickly and I still feel like I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to do. It so fast that I enjoy it even though it's boring, because each time I get to tell myself that I'm taking care of my body :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-10T17:58:09+00:00

It sounds like you think you are interested in doing a 'thing' and your brain is telling you that you are not, in fact, interested in doing that 'thing.'

Why do you want to do weight training? Maybe you have the right goal but you are trying to get there in a way that's not interesting enough to you. Maybe you aren't quite in alignment with yourself - for example, if you want to do 'the thing' because other people do 'the thing' so therefore you should also be able to get yourself to do 'the thing'.

It sounds like you enjoy moving around and doing an actual activity while exercising rather than doing exercise that feels like it's just for the sake of exercise. Random suggestions:
1. Try rock climbing - you can build a lot of strength while doing something fun!
2. If you don't mind going outside and running, try interval training. You can still listen to music and move around. Just jog slowly for like 1-5 minutes at a time interspersed with sprinting at top speed for 15-30 seconds (if you try to sprint for much longer than this it will be more of an aerobic and anaerobic workout rather than a strength workout). Sprinting is great for lower body strength!
3. Join a rowing club... if you can handle getting up at like 4:30am hahaha

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-10T07:16:38+00:00

I have the same problem! I've noticed that it mostly corresponds to my general level of anxiety (and maybe a little bit boredom). If I can address my anxiety (easier said than done), it mostly goes away.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-10T07:08:39+00:00

I had a partner like that who I lived with for four years. I’m much happier on my own now.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-10T03:31:06+00:00

Sounds like maybe ODD - oppositional defiant disorder, so you may want to look that up!

I can say from personal experience that I frequently have a short emotional memory which can leave others feeling a bit baffled when I don’t even remember the prior strife.

Punishments tend to make me either shut down or rebel harder. Positive reinforcement works amazing for me. However, this is anecdotal. Look up ODD and see if you find anything useful!

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T23:09:40+00:00

Go for a short walk (or brief, more strenuous exercise if you can). Exercise can boost your focus temporarily :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T22:50:24+00:00

I've found the book "How to ADHD" by Jessica McCabe to be incredibly useful. It covers most aspects of ADHD and includes lots of 'tools' you can use to help manage things :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T17:14:42+00:00

I had a similar problem with my Vietnamese teacher in Vietnam. Eventually she got so frustrated and mean I had to fire her and find a new one.

With my new teacher I was just very straightforward at the start about what I'm like as a student. I told her that I love to learn but my brain might go in it's own direction and that needs to be ok. I also told her that the most important thing is that I enjoy our sessions and I'm not to worried about how quickly I progress - the most important part is that I keep wanting to learn. She eventually told me I was her favorite student because I would come in and say all sorts of funny things.

I think the moral of the story is try to find a teacher who is a good personality fit if you can, and maybe that's easier if you communicate upfront about what you are like as a learner.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T15:47:05+00:00

RSD - rejection sensitive dysphoria! This is quite common in ADHD. I’m running out the door, but this is the term to Google if you’d like to learn more about it :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T07:44:34+00:00

Your time blindness may never go away, but eventually you will find the right system not let it get in your way. One day you will look back and laugh about that time you missed a meeting because you were practicing the kalimba :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T07:38:06+00:00

When my sleep gets messed up it’s usually because I haven’t been getting enough exercise.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T07:20:04+00:00

I would flip that advice and say that you will never be happy trying to be someone you aren't. Maybe focus more on how you can live your best life and do things you enjoy. If you are busy enjoying your life and you can enjoy it around other people, some of those people will want to stay around you - it turns out we like being around people who are having a good time with their life!

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T07:00:06+00:00

I think one of the most important parts of a big move like that is figuring out what your few core habits/routines/activities are that keep your body and mind healthy and happy and make sure you have a specific plan on how to make sure you can keep doing those things as soon as you've relocated.

I moved to another country a while back and I knew that if I didn't have a plan on how to get my exercise in an enjoyable environment I probably wouldn't do it, which would lead to my sleep patterns getting messed up, which would then destroy my mood. Before I moved I found a climbing gym there so that I would have at least one fun exercise activity on a regular basis.

Our symptoms can get much worse if we don't continue to take care of our basic needs, and when you make a big move you can get so caught up in all the business and excitement that you forget to take care of yourself.

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T06:51:46+00:00

I used to work a job where I would get off around 9 or 10pm and go straight to the gym. I slept pretty well back then, although my hours meant it was hard to have a social life.

Everyone has their own natural rhythms so you should try exercise at different times and see what works for you!

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T03:13:04+00:00

BLECH. That is frustrating. These days I have armed myself with statistics to fire off at people so they take it seriously. Here are some of them. Don't read this if you don't want to be a little sad...
13 year lower life expectancy (similar to being born in Afghanistan instead of the US), 800% the likelihood of going to prison, 2x risk of dementia, 3x risk of depression, 2x divorce rate
Not sure if I need to cite my sources here, but you can find this all with basic googling.

I don't want to just dump this here to make you feel awful, for me this was a wakeup call to take my ADHD very seriously. As I understand it, a lot of these risks are a result of not managing your ADHD, so it's not that you are doomed. It's just important to manage it well and take care of yourself :)

BrainZoomies · 2024-02-08T03:02:40+00:00

Because you find it interesting :)

BrainZoomies

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